June 17th, 2007

I had full day to say the least.  It started off going to a softball practice for the company team.  Even though it was laid back batting/fielding practice, I was winded by the end of it.  Then I had to drive back and change for the Pride event downtown.

As I walked from where I had to park to get there, I was self conscious about whether I'd have an encounter with anyone.  I would not make eye contact, and tried not to look at anyone.  Even as I walked past those already lining the parade route, I kept that up.  A couple time, people I think tried to say something positive but I hurried by, with just a quick smile at them.  Then it hit me that this was  Pride event, all about being proud of one's self.  So I picked my head up and acknowledged people and smiled & greeted them if they looked at me.  Of course, everything went fine from then on.

I had a great time in the booth and a lot of Trans Family members hung around the booth throughout my shift, and it was cool talking to them.  We weren't a very busy booth for people stopping by.  But I was pleased to see that several did sign up for more info and took some literature.  I had to leave for an evening cook out, but would have enjoyed staying longer.  I liked the band that was playing as I left and wished I could have heard their set. 

But it was time to go home again, change clothes as where I was going not everyone knew about me, and just showing up obviously feminine is not my plan for letting people know.  So I put on jeans & a casual top that didn't give anything away, & washed my make up off.  When I got there, my friends greeted me warmly with hugs & hellos.  I kind of hoped this might be how they'd treat me when I told them.  My idea was to wait until the end of the night to tell them.  Some of my friends already knew,  but the cause for the gathering was to welcome home a good friend of ours from High School that we haven't seen since.  I didn't want to make the evening's conversation about me, as I'm sure everyone was there to catch up with our friend.

Anyway, one of my best friends tipped me off early that they all knew by now, including our friend.  I'm not sure when they knew or how they found out, but it didn't really matter as everyone was obviously still cool with me.  So I did go up to those I thought I'd have to tell and talked to them about it, just to let them know they can ask me stuff and I was glad they were Ok with it.  So we did have some talks about me that evening, but by the end of it, I was glad that much of the conversations were still about our friend and it wasn't necessary to talk about me. 

I'll be seeing them again in a few days as we'll be at an Indian's baseball game.  I'm hoping that we're all there to just enjoy the game and talk about other stuff.  But yes, if someone wants to bring it up, I'm fine talking about it.  I just don't want to monopolized conversations or force people to listen to me talk about my situation.